My Beauty Best Teacher

On the right sidebar of my blog (under a 'Donate' button) I have a description of Bizarro World, also known as Htrae, which is a fictional planet in the DC comics universe. Htrae is home to Bizarro and his companions, who are ruled by the Bizarro Code, which states that you should do the opposite of everything.

For example, if a past US President was actually a forward-thinking President who embraced new technology, a resident of Bizarro world would give a speech suggesting that this President was the opposite of that. Like President Obama just did:

President Obama got a laugh out of a Maryland audience on Thursday when he mocked the Republican Party in a speech, comparing their skepticism of alternative energy to the “Flat Earth Society” in Christopher Columbus’ day and President Rutherford B. Hayes’ apparent dismissal of the telephone. But while Obama thinks the GOP is in need of a science lesson, he may need to bone up on history himself.

In mocking the GOP, Obama cited an anecdote about Hayes in which, upon using the telephone for the first time, he said, “It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?”

But Nan Card, curator of manuscripts at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Ohio, told TPM that the nation’s 19th president was being unfairly tagged as a Luddite.

“He really was the opposite,” she said. “He had the first telephone in the White House. He also had the first typewriter in the White House. Thomas Edison came to the White House as well and displayed the phonograph. Photographing people who came to the White House and visited at dinners and receptions was also very important to him.”...

....“He was pretty technology-oriented for the time,” Card said. “Between the telephone, the telegraph, the phonograph and photography, I think he was pretty much on the cutting edge.”...

President Obama was suggesting that Republicans are anti-technology for opposing windmills and not supporting railroads and and for denying that the globe is rapidly rising in temperature because of actions of mankind, and attempting to make his point by comparing the Republicans of today to past backwardness. But as usual, the reality is the exact opposite of everything that he said.

The reality is that President Obama is pushing for energy sources that are older than modern oil and nuclear which he opposes, that President Obama's attempt to force us to railroads and away from cars it the kind of anti-progress sentiment that one could expect from a Luddite, and that his theories about global warming have long-since been discredited by now, and that his examples of backwardness are in fact either made-up or forward looking in reality.

One has to wonder sometimes if my crazy joke that Bizarro world is real and that residents of this world have been flooding into the United States through some sort of interworld rift is really a joke or just may be true. I struggle to explain how so much of what Obama says is just so sheer the opposite of reality- on so many issues, so many policies, and so many 'statements of fact,' on further research not only is he wrong but he has been proven to be direct opposite of correct.

I call on all good Americans to resist these Bizarro's and their Bizarro agenda, and vote Republican in 2012.

I've been seeing variations of "classroom rules" sign all over Pinterest, and I love it! (I've also seen it's sister sign, family rules, which is equally as cute and catchy.) Most of the signs I see have painted letters on large, wooden boards, but I'm not crafty enough to make one of those. :)

I decided just to create a couple of printables using my handy-dandy PhotoShop software. Here's a black and white version:

Click to enlarge. Feel free to right-click and save a copy! :)

And here's one with more color:

Click to enlarge. Feel free to right-click and save a copy! :)

I have a cheap-o ornate frame (that I got for $1 at a garage sale a while back) that I think I'll spray paint a fun, funky color. Then I can put the black and white print inside the frame and place it on my desk. Other ways you could use this:

• Enlarge it, frame it, and hang it on the wall.
• Laminate it and hang on the wall (or on your door). 
• Print off multiple copies for students to keep in their binders or use as bookmarks.
• Give a print plus a frame to a favorite teacher as a pick-me-up. :)

On the lighter side of things, apparently you and I are working hard right now to help re-elect President Barack Obama, donating millions through taxes to his campaign to help transport security vehicles, armored limousines, and communications gear into cities ahead of his various campaign appearances. President Obama has decided to fly around the nation giving speech after speech instead of working hard to rebuild our economy, right-size government, lower the deficit, bring efficiency to operations, root out waste and fraud, and working to strike the compromises and deals needed to reform our bankrupt entitlement programs- and you're gonna pay for it.

Via The Daily Caller, Obama campaign gets more Air Force aircraft:

The U.S. Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Barack Obama’s stepped-up visits to campaign events.

The five medium-capacity C-130s and four heavyweight C-17s will be used to ferry security vehicles, armored limousines and communications gear into cities ahead of Obama’s campaign appearances.

In the months before November, the president is expected to fly into multiple cities per week, and speak at multiple sites per day. On Mar. 8, for example, the president will fly to Richmond, and then drive over to a Rolls-Royce aircraft-parts factory. That evening, he’ll fly down to Houston, Texas.

His wife, Vice President Joe Biden and many of his cabinet secretaries are using the Air Force’s fleet of VIP aircraft to visit more states as the election season speeds up.

The nine cargo aircraft will begin operations in April, said Maj. Michelle Lai, communications officer for the Air Force’s 89th Airlift Wing. “They’ll stand down in November 2012,” she said...

...The cargo aircraft have been used to fly troops, weapons and supplies into U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Iraq and other sites in the Middle East during the decade-long operations in Afghanistan and Iraq...

...The squadrons will supplement the existing fleet of VIP passenger aircraft at Andrews. Those aircraft include two giant Boeing 747s — which are tagged Air Force One while they’re carrying the president — as well as five Boeing 757 wide-body passenger jets, and 11 Gulfstream executive jets.

Those passenger aircraft are already helping shuttling cabinet secretaries to their election-related events, many of which are in critical swing-states...

So, to sum up, rather than protecting our nation, or carrying food to poor starving children, or just sitting and not wasting expensive jet fuel, the President has ordered that military assets be used to supplement his already extensive fleet in ferrying people and supplies around the nation, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands.

It's kind of hard for liberals and progressives to argue that President Obama's actions as demonstrated here are anything other than wrong. On the other hand, I kind of feel like this borders on criminal- it's the utter misuse of government resources to support a person's political ambitions and fly friends and family around the nation in taxpayer paid luxury.

I recently got the opportunity to review both of Dr. Erica Warren's Following Directions workbooks, and I wanted to tell you what I think.

Before we begin, let me just say that Dr. Warren gave these workbooks to me for free, asking if I would review them on my blog. I am not getting any more compensation than just the workbooks themselves for writing this post, and I would never endorse any product I didn't fully believe in.

With that said, let's talk specifically about Warren's two Following Directions workbooks. The workbooks I sampled are called Following Directions (An Intermediate Workbook 1) and Following Directions: The Easy Way (A Beginner's Workbook 1).

The concept for both of the workbooks is the same: we want to condition our students to pay closer attention to directions and be able to follow directions quickly but accurately. To an extent, these workbooks somewhat reminded me of those "April Fool's Day" following-directions sheets that teachers sometimes give to play a joke on their students, like this:

This (obviously used) April Fool's Day prank was found here.

But unlike the April Fool's Day sheets like the one featured above, Warren's workbooks will not embarrass any student who do not follow the directions precisely (no one has to yell a sentence about their school pride or clap their hands twice during these workbooks! lol).

To help condition students to follow directions, Warren has created a series of worksheet pages with a grid of pictures, numbers, or letters on it. Above the grid is a set of step-by-step instructions as to what the student should do on the grid. Here is a sneak peak at the example page from her Following Directions: The Fun and Easy Way (A Beginners Workbook 1) book:





This is just a simple grid -- the grids and instructions get larger and more complex as you move through the book.

One thing I like about these books is that these grids aren't just practice on following directions. Sure, these worksheets will help students practice following written directions. But I personally think they will also help students exercise their "critical thinking skills" muscle. You see, the directions aren't always clear when you first read them. For instance, one of the directions I saw said, "I am in one of the rows above the second-to-last row." Even as an adult, I had to stop and think about what that really meant. Another line of directions said, "I am a consonant." For this, not only do students need to know the difference between a consonant and a vowel, but they also have to reason that if our answer is a consonant, our answer cannot be a vowel; therefore, we need to cross out all vowels.

As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of the logic grids my 6th grade science teacher used to give us:

This particular puzzle can be found here.

I, for one, love using logic puzzles in the classroom because I feel that most students need to practice those much-needed critical thinking skills, and these are the perfect way to do so. (By the way, Puzzle Baron has actual books you buy that contain paper copies of all of their logic grids. Find one here
.)

Anyway, I think Warren's "Following Directions" workbooks could help students in a variety of ways. There are directional words in almost every line of directions, so students could practice directions and prepositions. There are math words such as "less than," "odd," "trapezoid" with which students will become familiar. There is even some science in these sheets: "I need water to live," and "Sunlight is my food" are two examples. All in all, I think that if you want to give your students practice at following directions (and a few other things), these workbooks are a good buy.

Warren offers a free sample of a Following Directions book on her Teachers Pay Teachers page.

If you'd like to read the reviews and/or purchase one or both of these books, click the images below to be taken to their product listings on Amazon.





Even if you don't want to use these pages as actual activities in your classroom, I think they could still be useful as bellwork or "what to do when you're done" activities for those early-finishers. If nothing else, the critical thinking skills students would build from doing these pages could probably prepare students to achieve higher test scores on those state-mandated exams!

Here are ten consequences of a victory by President Barack Obama in November 2012 over Mitt Romney:

1. Obamacare will not be repealed. It is already being demonstrated to raise costs of healthcare and as its taxes and regulations sink deeper through the system, it will cause our healthcare system to increasingly be in a crisis, likely resulting in greater and greater government control to 'fix', until we have a massively inefficient and expensive and bad healthcare system.
2. The unprecedented levels of spending in Obama’s first four years will become the new floor, as America continues its experiment in reckless spending and adding up massive debt. The new normal of debt that Obama has established- $1 trillion a year of living beyond our means as a nation- will erode the value of our currency, lead to higher interest rates, lessen our national security, and eventually cause our nation to collapse. Four more years at our current levels might just about do it.
3. Job creators will face massive tax increases and more Americans will come off the tax rolls—resulting in fewer citizens with a stake in keeping taxes low and more with a stake in protecting benefits. The Bush tax cuts and other tax cuts may be allowed to expire while Obama and the Democrats who still support his failing policies will push for more taxes, fees, and fines to pay for the exploding cost of employing more and more government workers and providing ever more 'free' services and products to citizens.
4. Government dependency, already at record levels, will continue to grow. Based on the results of his first 4 years as President in which record numbers of people went on welfare, more people will go on food stamps and bridge cards and lifelong unemployment and other government programs. They will not gain job skills and any skills they have will be eroded by time, rendering them unemployable, unhappy, and dependent on elites above to provide them with what they need to live. They'll become slaves to the state, living in permanent poverty, and I don't think we can afford four more years of accepting this.
5. Four more years that we have already lost in dealing with the looming and inevitable entitlement crisis will become eight. The reforms needed for strong and healthy Social Security and Medicare programs  will need to be in place many years to avoid the collapse that is coming, and the delay of electing Obama on a myth of hope and change has already set our nation back a critical 4 years- another 4 years of Obama might change the conversation from 'implement reforms to keep these programs' to 'its a crisis and we're facing a collapse.'
6. Obama, unworried about the impact of gas and electricity prices on his reelection, will finally wage the regulatory war on fossil fuels the Left demands. As Obama stated in March, no President wanting to win re-election wants high gas prices- but a President not needing to win re-election because he is a lame duck for four years will not need to worry about high gas prices, and he is sure to wage a war to drive up the cost of gas. The cost of gasoline is a very regressive tax, which means when it goes up it hurts the poor more than the rich, and the effects of 4 more years of Obama will be a more unequal society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
7. He will unleash the Environmental Protection Agency to impose crushing new burdens on U.S. business. Already the EPA is an agency just barely under control, in every way it can waging its green communist war against freedom and liberty and property. Another 4 years of executive orders and ever expanding budgets will make this agency uncontrollable and its regulations and policies will be a corrupting influence on any potential economic growth.
8. President Obama will continue and heighten his administration’s assault on religious freedom, expanding it into other areas in his effort to wipe out the influence of Christians in our nation. Already liberals and progressives speak about removing the 'tax-exempt' status from Churches, closing down all religious schools, and increasing the wall of separation that already exists between church and state. Eventually, once organized religion- mainly Christianity, especially Catholicism-  is walled off and isolated, personalized and demonized, he can finally kill God and replace him with himself or one of his idols.
9. Another 4 more years of Obama will gut the Defense Department, with cuts so deep that America will no longer be a superpower. Already under Obama we have abandoned our long-held policy of fighting two wars; another 4 years of Obama may lead to our inability to fight one war successfully. While the military is cut, Obama as commander-in-chief focuses on making it more gay-friendly and more green, and another four more years of this may result in the US losing its ability to protect its citizens and interests around the globe.
10. Obama could have the opportunity to appoint more Supreme Court justices, and we have seen from President Obama's past two picks for the judicial branch that he does not even pretend to try to appoint moderates and independents, rather fighting hard to advance and appoint the most partisan and extreme judges in our system. If he is given another four more years by winning re-election in November, we could be looking at a majority of the court that agrees with current liberal Justices who argue that the US Constitution is inferior to the constitutions of other states and that we should use international law instead of US law when making decisions for our nation. This extreme and rogue and partisan Court of unaccountable and unelected lawyers will be a great threat to your life, liberty, and property.

You and your family and friends should be opposing President Barack Obama and working to remove him from power because of consequences above, which are all policy options that President Obama freely chooses to engage in. Most of these policies he pushed for when his party controlled all of Congress, and even today his party still controls the Senate. No one forced him to adopt the policies above, which will have the logical and reasonable consequences I detailed. Racism, partisanship, extremism, and dislike for the guy personally are not to be found in my analysis above. Rather my analysis is based on logic, history, reason, and results, from those principles we can see the consequences of President Barack Obama winning re-election in 2012, and knowing this, we should all oppose him and vote for his likely Republican opponent Mitt Romney.

UPDATE: Thank you for linking Right Wing News and Adrienne's Catholic Corner!

Sandra Fluke is not demanding that the government provide free cough drops and viagra to men- but Remy is.

Conservatives are both funnier and more intelligent than liberals, and as evidence I submit the following music video from Remy, in which he crashes Sandra Fluke's Congressional testimony to demand a mandate for his cough drop addiction. Brought to you by Reason.tv and running under 2 minutes, it makes an utter mockery of liberals like President Barack Obama who suggest that taxpayers should provide birth control of any sort to any female on demand and that to question this sort of give-away is to want women to go back to the dark ages.

Laugh and enjoy:

Don't buy the narrative that the main-stream media is selling regarding the Republican Primary- the truth of the matter is that Mitt Romney is not having trouble putting away a weak field of Republicans because he is unlikable and doesn't connect with voters, but rather he is doing pretty much exactly as good a job as other past non-incumbents did in close primary races and is doing a good job of winning over key voters and will soon with the nomination over a highly qualified and determined primary field. Although the liberals and progressives and elites in the media want you to think otherwise, analysis and data (as usual) destroys their uneducated arguments and shallow judgements.

Via Powerlineblog comes this excellent analysis from John Hinderaker called THE MORNING AFTER:

...So Romney has won 56% of all of the delegates that have been chosen so far. Normally that would be considered a strong performance, but Mitt struggles to get respect from the commentariat.... But by historic standards, there is no reason to scoff at Romney’s performance so far. After Super Tuesday in 2008, John McCain had won 740 of the 1,235 delegates that had been selected, or 60%. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama had a hair over 50% of the delegates, leading Hillary Clinton 965-951. Were reporters then talking about the Democratic contest “plodding on” as Obama “failed to land a knockout blow?” Of course not: they thought the contest was a thrilling one, because they liked both candidates.

Or consider 1992, when the Democratic presidential field was considered so weak that the candidates were called the “seven dwarves.” Bill Clinton, who we now know was a politician of genius, won that race. But as of early March 1992, Clinton was running behind “uncommitted” and, of the committed delegates, he had won just 57%. By early April, Clinton had 68% of the committed delegates (a much lower percentage if uncommitted delegates were counted) against some of the weakest competition ever: Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown....

...So by historic standards, Romney is within the ballpark of what one would expect from a non-incumbent candidate who goes on to win his party’s nomination.

The truth of the matter is that Mitt Romney is winning against a very good field of candidates- a two-term Senator who is a gifted speaker and has a solid person life named Rick Santorum (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008), a former Speaker of the House of Representatives named Newt Gingrich (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008), and a long-time Congressman who is a veteran and doctor and has a committed following (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008). And Romney has already knocked out of the race several other good candidates- the Governor of booming Texas named Rick Perry (who has a resume that was superior to President Obama in 2008) and a former Governor and Ambassador named John Huntsman (who has a resume that was superior to President Obama in 2008).

This is a strong field, especially at a time period when the Republican Party is transitioning away from the old guard liberal establishment of Bush and McCain and Dole towards the new conservative talent of Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindhal and Sarah Palin and others. The GOP is at an odd place where the Reagan and conservative revolution generation is too old or too discredited and the new tea party generation is too young and untested- and yet a guy like Mitt Romney has a strong resume and background and talents that has enabled him to ably bridge this gap.

Even in a rather down year, the GOP has a wealth of talent and ideas to offer to contrast to the tired and old partisanship and personal attacks that President Obama is offering, and Mitt Romney has connected with voters and fought a national and organized campaign to take a solid and commanding primary lead. This is the narrative, based on an analysis of the resumes of his opponents and the delegate math in comparison to other primaries, and this is the narrative that the media is refusing to tell because of its sloppy reporting, personal bias, and lack of quality research.

Mitt Romney is doing a great job of rising to the top of a group of able Republicans who would all do a better job of being President than Barack Obama. This is the true narrative of the Republican Primary race of 2012.

Full Disclosure: I endorsed Mitt Romney recently. See my post Endorsement: Vote for Mitt Romney for GOP Nominee.

Today's post is brought to you by Adrianne Meldrum from Kids Cog Works. I am so excited for you guys to read this one -- it's such a great idea!

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I am sure you have heard of the show Amazing Race where contestants race all over the world and get clues to their next destination.

Borrowing from this idea, I have come up with The Amazing Word Race! In this game, students would be in groups of two to four. They need to decide the name of their team. The object of this game is to practice or review some phonics that you're students may be missing, but in a super-fun way.

Everyone will be given the first card. It has a phonics sound that they have to hunt for. All books, print, magazines ~ everything is available for their use in this game. They are even allowed to use the dictionary! Players must use at least 5 different resources when making a list. When you say "Go" students will race to get their hands on some print and start hunting for words. If a team fills up their paper, they race back to you and get the next clue.

For an example, on a card it may have the sound /sh/ on it. The card will have a sample of words that start with that sound and have the sound somewhere in the middle. Students may just run to a dictionary and write down all the words that start with /sh/ like "shoot", but if they really get smart they can write down words like "swish" or "fish". You can choose to limit how many words they use that start with the sound on the clue card.

You will continue in this fashion until there is a clear winner. Consider having a winner ceremony and reward all the students in some way for playing the game. I made printables for you to use in this game. Click here to get them. I hope you have fun racing towards better learning!


Adrianne Meldrum has a degree in Elementary Education. She currently tutors struggling readers and middle school math students. She is the author of Kidscogworks.com and creator of Brain Tower . Adrianne is the wife of an engineer and a mother to three very handsome boys.

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Thanks for the fantastic idea, Adrianne! I can't wait to use it!

Thinking of this game makes me wonder if we could tweak it a little to use it for slightly different subjects. For instance, young students could go on an "Amazing Color Race" and try to take pictures of as many, say, green things as possible. Or maybe students could go on a different "Amazing Word Race" and try to hunt the room for other words that fit their spelling words' patterns. 

I wonder if we could even tweak this idea to use it for older students. For instance, when I taught secondary English, I offered extra credit to students that could find examples of what we were learning in real life. I encouraged students to send me music or audio clips recorded from a commercial, pictures of signs or movie posters, etc. that incorporated a vocabulary word or literary concept that we had studied. Could English students could go on an "Amazing Simile Race" or an "Amazing Symbolism Race" with a stack of books or stories?

Or what if geometry students went on an "Amazing Shape Race" and tried to find as many examples of geometric shapes as possible in the classroom or outside?

Really, the possibilities are only limited to your imagination. :) I'd love to hear your ideas and other thoughts in the comments below!